December 16, 2025
Title without trust is just a badge
I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?
Nobody listens to this Tech Lead; internet says: be a leader, not a lecturer
TLDR: A tech lead at a ride-hailing app shared how he pushed incident reviews and culture fixes after being ignored. The community shot back: trust beats titles, listen more, persuade better—and some said if no one follows, you’re not leading. It’s a real-world lesson in leadership that matters.
João joins ride-hailing rival mytaxi (now FREE NOW) as a “Chapter Lead,” trying to level up in tech leadership. Day one: boom—an incident. No one knows who’s in charge, how to document it, or how to communicate. He reads logs like a wizard, then pushes incident reviews and a grand backend strategy, complete with hexagonal architecture and a testing pyramid. He kicks off a series and teases “The Tech Lead Handbook” for 2026. He also flagged domain mix-ups—like tax rules clobbering unrelated features—fueling chaos.
The comments went full gladiator. One camp says titles mean nothing: earn trust, listen, empower—don’t lean on hierarchy. Another camp delivers brutal honesty: “If nobody listens, you aren’t a tech lead.” The snarky middle chimes in with “Good luck with that” to any one-size-fits-all playbook. “Become a leader” turned into a meme reply—short, sharp, and not super helpful. Jokes flew about the “Harry Potter of logs” and the idea that PowerPoint decks won’t fix culture. Drama centers on trust vs authority and process vs persuasion; the Spotify-inspired structure got side-eye. Fans like the incident postmortems, skeptics groan at buzzword bingo. It’s part confession, part handbook teaser, and full-on comment section reckoning.
Key Points
- •In June 2018, the author joined mytaxi (FREE NOW) as Backend Chapter Lead using a Spotify-inspired squad/chapter model.
- •The role combined backend technical leadership and horizontal people management during rapid growth with 200+ services and 3–5 monthly hires.
- •A first-day incident exposed gaps in incident management, documentation, communication, and debugging, plus problematic cross-domain coupling.
- •The author created an incident review document and suggested prioritized preventive tasks after the incident.
- •An initial backend strategy was proposed, including hexagonal architecture and a testing approach with contract tests to protect mobile APIs.